Georgy and Konstantin
The train pulled in.
Black smoke billowed from the steam locomotive’s chimney, and a moment later the brakes scraped against the platform.
The carriage seats were wooden.
I miss the Sapsan trains—with their cushioned seats and even Wi-Fi…
—Thud!
The backrest slammed straight into my spine.
The thought of sitting on this for eight hours made my backside ache in advance.
“Ow, my ass.”
“Just hang in there a little. We’ll be there soon.”
The soldiers sitting across from me seemed to be thinking the same thing.
He looked about twenty… no, on closer inspection a bit older. Late twenties, maybe?
Broad shoulders, hair cropped short.
The young soldier was wearing a Red Army officer’s uniform.
I glanced at the rank insignia fastened to his collar.
In this period the Soviet Red Army had no distinctions like field-grade or company-grade ranks, but I knew well enough that the insignia he wore marked him as something on the order of a regimental commander.
As I sat down he casually turned his gaze and met my eyes.
They were sharp and piercing, yet he did not look away.
A moment later he propped his chin on one hand and turned his attention to the window, as if I were no threat at all—completely at ease.
Beside him sat another officer.
He was extremely tall. Even seated he looked huge.
A rough estimate put him at a hundred ninety centimeters at least.
He too wore the same officer’s uniform.
If the man opposite me was a tightly locked safe, how to describe this tall one…? For all his height, he had a gentle air.
The corners of his mouth naturally curved upward; he had mild eyes.
Yet his posture was as straight as the soldier beside him, shoulders squared.
“Hey.”
The soldier staring out the window spoke.
“What are you staring at so hard? Something you want to know?”
“Ah… if I seemed rude, I apologize. It’s nothing like that… your uniform just really stood out.”
I deflected casually, and the sharp-eyed man looked me up and down once more.
“…You’re not a commissar, are you?”
“Pardon?”
Commissar…?
Is he seriously suspecting me of being a political officer?
I let out a silent, hollow laugh.
Then suddenly the word Nadezhda had dropped last night—“military school”—floated back into my mind.
Nah. No way…
…No way, right?
Anyway, just as I was about to protest his words—
“Hahaha… a political officer? Stop talking nonsense and unpack your gear.”
Before I could even open my mouth, the tall man scolded him.
“Ahem… still, you never know. Listen, could you show me your ticket?”
“…Of course.”
I had no particular reason to refuse, so I pulled the ticket from the inner pocket of my coat.
“Ticket from Moscow to Leningrad… name is Yakov Dzhugashvili…”
“Hey, Zhora! That’s enough. Look at him. He’s clearly a student who looks way younger than us—how could he be a political officer? You’re overreacting, so hurry up and apologize.”
“Ahem… White remnant bastards have been pulling a lot of train attacks lately. A soldier’s supposed to stay vigilant about everything. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Haa…”
The tall man bowed his head to me in his place.
“I’m sorry. So, your name is…”
“Yakov Dzhugashvili.”
“Right, Comrade Dzhugashvili. Anyway, this friend of mine has a bit of a… personality, you know. He didn’t suspect you out of malice.”
“…What’s wrong with me? I was just doing a soldier’s duty.”
The sharp-eyed man scratched his temple with his index finger, looking embarrassed, and averted his gaze.
An awkward silence settled for a moment.
Then the sharp-eyed man dragged the knapsack at his feet up onto his lap.
He undid the buckle, rummaged inside, and pulled out nothing other than a loaf of black bread.
Then he drew a military dagger and in an instant sliced the bread into three equal pieces.
“…….”
The man quietly held one piece out to me.
“Even if you die you’ll never say you’re sorry, will you, Zhora.”
“…This is my way of apologizing. Mind your own business, Kostya.”
I accepted the bread he offered with proper courtesy.
It was so hard that just holding it made my teeth ache.
“Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov.”
“…What?!”
“What’s with the shock over a man’s name. That’s my name—Georgy Zhukov.”
The sharp-featured young officer repeated the name Zhukov.
If my historical knowledge was not mistaken, he was without a doubt the brilliant commander of the Great Patriotic War who would one day rise to command the Eastern Front—Marshal Zhukov.
The general Stalin took a liking to—the one who stopped every one of Hitler’s assaults on Leningrad, Moscow, and Stalingrad, then captured Berlin. Stalin seems to have liked Zhukov precisely because of his irascible temperament. A man who spoke recklessly, was self-righteous, and made enemies left and right with his pride—Stalin must have judged him no threat to power.
That ability triggered again and poured into my head.
So this blunt fellow chewing black bread in front of me is the same Zhukov who will take Berlin twenty years from now…?
In truth, just as the whisper said, Zhukov would later lose a power struggle with Khrushchev and be forcibly retired.
“For the record, the beanpole next to me is Konstantin Rokossovsky. Polish-born cavalry regimental commander.”
Rokossovsky…?!
The brilliant commander who led the vanguard of Operation Bagration and annihilated German Army Group Center—the only soldier to hold the rank of Marshal in both the Soviet Union and Poland. Yet he was also an ill-fated man, branded a Soviet stooge in Poland and suspected as a Pole in the Soviet Union.
“Why are you suddenly announcing someone else’s origins, Zhuk…?”
Rokossovsky grumbled without knowing why.
I held the black bread and quietly watched his sly profile.
Even in the Polish-Soviet War this same Rokossovsky had led Polish volunteer troops and fought with distinction against Poland.
In Poland they pointed at him as the Soviet dog; in the Soviet Union the stigma of Polish spy swept him into the bloodstorm of the Great Purge—an unlucky man.
“I am only afraid of being walled up. (Только боюсь, что меня замуруют в стену)”
The words Rokossovsky spoke to Zhukov when they met in a sanatorium just before his death came back to me.
Suspected as a spy by the very country he had served, yet he fought for that country again.
Why did this nation imprison and torture its brilliant commanders until they feared closed rooms for the rest of their lives?
I had no way of knowing the answer, so I simply swallowed the black bread in silence.
“…I told you not to call me that.”
“It’s just a nickname. Zhukov, Zhuk. Sounds similar, doesn’t it?”
“A nickname? That’s the insult the bastards who talk behind my back use. I’ve been warning you since cavalry school and you still haven’t learned.”
“Whoa, whoa. Calm down, Comrade Zhuk. What’s wrong with a beetle? Small, tough, and above all—small. Quite a bit like you, mainly in the height department.”
Zhukov’s height was officially recorded at 164 centimeters—far smaller in build than the 190-centimeter giant Rokossovsky.
“Kostya, you son of a—”
Zhukov’s voice dropped a full tone.
Yet Rokossovsky seemed utterly unbothered and kept raking Zhukov’s insides raw.
“Why the swearing? You started it.”
Rokossovsky leaned back against the seat and stretched his legs out long.
In the narrow carriage those long legs shot past Zhukov’s thigh.
Zhukov’s face flushed reddish.
The two soldiers sitting side by side on the wooden seats of the cramped carriage glared and growled at each other.
The temperature in the carriage seemed to drop about two degrees, and I could only freeze in place, black bread still in hand.
Their quarrel continued even after the train left the Moscow suburbs, after the black smoke from factory chimneys vanished and the wide open plains unfolded.
“Remember the cavalry school graduation photo? You stood in the second row and I stood in the third…”
“Bring that up again and I really will kill you…!”
“I came out a full head taller than you.”
“…The platform heights were different, that’s all.”
“There wasn’t any such thing, was there…?”
“Aargh… this is the last straw!”
Zhukov shot to his feet inside the moving train.
Rokossovsky refused to yield and rose as well, flaunting his great height.
If this kept up, the carriage would be wrecked by the two officers’ fight before we ever reached Leningrad.
“Um, may I speak frankly?”
“…Go ahead.”
“What’s so bad about being short?”
“……?”
“…Pfft.”
Zhukov’s eyes went round; Rokossovsky clutched his stomach and laughed.
Ignoring their reactions, I pressed on.
“Napoleon was 168 centimeters. Suvorov never topped 160. Yet both of them were brilliant commanders who crossed the Alps—thousands of times larger than themselves.”
“Ho… Comrade Dzhugashvili seems to know European history rather well.”
“…Continue.”
“And in modern war the shorter side actually has the advantage. When bullets fly, you just duck into the trench and you’re done. Tall Comrade Rokossovsky here would stick his head out if he climbed into a trench, wouldn’t he?”
At my words Zhukov looked Rokossovsky up and down and nodded.
“True enough…. In the last war game Kostya stuck out so much we lost. Didn’t Comrade Konev say, ‘Regimental Commander Rokossovsky’s great height was nothing but a fine target’?”
“That wasn’t my fault—it was just the limits of cavalry! Cavalry doesn’t go into trenches anyway.”
“You planning to dodge like that in a real war too?”
“Th-that’s not what I—”
“And you still call yourself a cavalry regimental commander? I feel sorry for your men. Having a clueless officer like this for a superior. Sigh… what use is the useless Rokossovsky cavalry brigade even going to be on the battlefield now?”
“You’re a cavalry officer too, damn it…!!”
Rokossovsky had given an inch and gotten a mile.
I cut into their conversation once more.
How was I supposed to just sit here and take this!!!
“It’s already been proven that cavalry isn’t useful in trench warfare. But that doesn’t mean it has no value. With superior mobility you can outflank the trenches and raid the enemy’s command headquarters.”
“That’s only if you already know where the enemy HQ is. How do you outflank without intelligence?”
“That’s a reconnaissance problem, not a cavalry problem, Zhora.”
“That right there is the limit of cavalry, Kostya. As long as those giant trenches stretch like walls, our cavalry can’t survive on the battlefield anymore.”
“But in the last war it was the cavalry-centered shock group (Grupa Uderzeniowa) that decided victory or defeat. Cavalry is still effective.”
“Tch, only using your mother tongue when you’re losing, huh?”
“Shock army. Happy now?”
Zhukov’s theory was sound.
Through the World War and the Civil War, the cold reality of “trenches and machine guns” had rendered cavalry a paper tiger of an arm.
And the last war Rokossovsky mentioned was the Polish-Bolshevik War that broke out after the end of the First World War.
In that war the Soviet forces had suffered a crushing defeat, allowing the charge of Polish armored trains, Renault light tanks, and Piłsudski’s elite cavalry divisions.
Even after that, the two men’s debate continued until the train arrived at Leningrad Station.